Wikiversity is a Wikimedia
Foundation
project, which supports learning communities, their
learning materials, and resulting activities. It differs
from more structured projects such as
Wikipedia in that it instead offers a series of
tutorials, or courses, for the fostering of learning, rather than
formal content.
History
Wikiversity's
beta phase officially
began on August 15, 2006 with the
English language
Wikiversity.
Project details
Wikiversity is a center for the creation and use of free learning
materials, and the provision of
learning activities. Wikiversity
is one of many wikis used in educational contexts, as well as many
initiatives that are creating free and
open educational resources.
The primary priorities and goals for Wikiversity are to:
- Create and host a range of free-content, multilingual learning
materials/resources, for all age groups in all languages.
- Host scholarly/learning projects and communities that support
these materials.
The Wikiversity e-Learning model places emphasis on "learning
groups" and
"learning by
doing". Wikiversity's motto and slogan is "set learning free",
indicating that groups/communities of Wikiversity participants will
engage in learning projects. Learning is facilitated through
collaboration on projects that are detailed, outlined, summarized
or results reported by editing Wikiversity pages. Wikiversity
learning projects include collections of
wiki
webpages concerned with the exploration of a particular topic.
Wikiversity participants are encouraged to express their learning
goals, and the Wikiversity community collaborates to develop
learning activities and projects to accommodate those goals.
However, as the project is still in its early stages, its learning
model is still in development.
Learning resources are developed by an individual or groups, either
on their own initiative, or as part of a learning project.
Wikiversity resources include teaching aids, lesson plans,
curricula, links to off-site resources, course notes, example and
problem sets, computer simulations, reading lists, and other as
devised by participants - but do not include final polished
textbooks. Texts useful to others are hosted at
Wikibooks for update and maintenance. Learning
groups with interests in each subject area create a web of
resources that form the basis of discussions and activities at
Wikiversity. Learning resources can be used by educators outside of
Wikiversity for their own purposes, under the terms of the
GFDL (like
Wikipedia).
Languages
There are currently ten language Wikiversities – English, French,
Finnish, German, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Czech, Portuguese and
Japanese; Wikiversity projects in other languages are being
developed at the
"beta" multilingual hub.
For newly established specific language Wikiversities to move out
of the initial exploratory "beta" phase, the new Wikiversity
community must establish policies governing research activities.
Wikiversity may act as a repository of research carried out by the
Wikimedia Research
Network, or others who are involved in wiki-based, or other
research. Wikiversity hosts original research in addition to
secondary research, unless a specific language group decides upon
no research. It is expected that researchers will respect and
update guidelines for appropriate research through a community
consensus process.
See also
References
External links
- The Wikiversity multilingual portal - with links to all
Wikiversity sites.
- The English language Wikiversity (in
beta
phase)
- " Resources for Professional Development"
Prepared for the Fall conference of the Missouri Juvenile Justice
Association, October—2006, Office of State Courts Administrator,
Division of Judicial Education P48.
- "Conference Review" by Peter Mulholland;
Journal of Emergency Primary Health Care; Vol.4, Issue 4, 2006. (
pdf version)
- Topps, D. "Sharing medical educational resources using free and
open-source software." in 7th Annual WONCA Rural Health Conference
- Transforming Rural Practice Through Education. 2006. Seattle, WA,
USA.
- "Access to Global Learning: A Matter of Will"
by Steven R. Van Hook; Education Resources Information Center;
(ERIC Document No. ED492804); April 27, 2006.
- "Organic Education: Nine Best Internet Tools"
by John Paull.
- "Using Wiki to Promote Collaborative Learning in
Statistics Education" by Dani Ben-Zvi; Technology Innovations
in Statistics Education; Volume 1, Issue 1, 2007, Article 4; Page
4. ( pdf version)
- "Bootstrapping a Semantic Wiki Application for
Learning Mathematics" by Claus Zinn.
- "Beyond Difference: Reconfiguring Education for the
User-Led Age" by Axel Bruns; Proceedings ICE 3: Ideas,
Cyberspace, Education.
- "The Challenges and Successes of Wikibookian
Experts and Wikibook Novices: Classroom and Community Collaborative
Experiences" by Suthiporn Sajjapanroj, Curt Bonk, Mimi Lee and
Meng-Fen Grace Lin.
- "Wiki or Won't He? A Tale of
Public Sector Wikis" by Marieke Guy; Ariadne, Issue 49; October
2006.
- "New-Media Art Education and Its Discontents" by
Trebor Scholz.